Diary of an Arcade Employee

1982 ColecoVision Catalog

My friend Keith was the first kid in our neighborhood to get a ColecoVision and me and all of the rest of Atari players were just blow away by the faithful arcade quality games. I think I spent an entire weekend at his house when he got his system, playing just Donkey Kong. The graphics were amazing for the time, but the controller hurt my hand so much that the next weekend I was back on my Atari.

The siren song of amazing graphics is hard to resist, but if your system is difficult to use, you will lose your audience. ColecoVision, I hardly knew ye.

As a kid with a 2600, I was always amazed by those graphics. I would have gladly traded my controller – or so I thought at the time. Until my best friend got a 5200, and I realized just how important a good controller was.

I’ve looked at this so many times. And after I’m done, I say, “why hasn’t anyone done that skiing game homebrew style?” I bet had that game been released and looked like that, it would have sold more than Donkey Kong. Judging from the graphics, it may have to have been a ColecoVision Super Game (digital data pack or disk) instead of cartridge. Maybe a homebrewer can prove me wrong :)